Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Finding Characters Easier

With the recent update/improvement of the Looking For Roleplay function, i couldnt help but to think of how to make it easier to find characters as well. And that made me think of a function from RPG, one that i used all the time to find characters and that worked like a dream, or atleast very good.

And that is Universes! Now i know that we have groups and genre to do this BUT they are not ideal or perfect since anyone can do them and therefor make multiple ones. And im not even sure if their soul purpouse is even for finding characters in the first place.

So here is how Universes would work;
*First off the site (meaning the admins as well as the players) would add these Universes which would be cannon ones, like Pokemon as well as OC ones like Anthros or Mythical Beasts & Creatures. With the rule that they must be broad, as broad as possible to not create multiple or similar ones, cause that would just beat the purpouse of it all. For example, a Universe called Pokemon gen 1 or Kanto only instead of Pokemon, would not only limit but also split all of the pokemon themed characters and therefor beat the whole purpose of this function. A flaw that RPG sadly didnt fix.

*After a few are made, people would get the option to join one when editing a character (next to template for example) and professor Minotaur could be next to it and remind the player that adding his or hers character to a Universe would....well benefit everyone. But it wouldnt be a must of course since i guess some people dosent wish for their characters to be found easily or well at all for some reason. But anyone who does want their character to be found should do it.

*And once a character is added to a Universe it can be seen on a list under that Universe by anyone who visit the page of it. Each character can join more than one, but again only if they fit into it.

However i think there should be a few rules or else this would simply not work out. And yes sorry to repeat myself but i want to make this very clear.
So the first and probally most important rule of them all; Is that there would be NO multiple or similar Universes. There should only be one of each so that people can find what their looking for easily and dosent have to go to multiple places for it. Like with the example of Pokemon above. And in order to prevent this, i believe that every Universe should be carefully read through and compared to others before being accepted onto the list of Universes. I was thinking that players could create these themselfs somehow but that might be too much to look through then. So maybe instead, there should be a forum post about it where people suggest or tell what they need for their characters. I personally enjoyed to make my own Universes back in RPG but its not worth it if it breaks the system of it. And if people for some reason dont like the info or whatever provided in the Universe then they can always point that out. I was thinking that everyone should have the option to edit it themselfs but that would probally only cause more problems then anything.

The second rule would be that EVERY character and i mean every single one of them MUST have a connection to the Univrse in question to be added to it. If a character has nothing to do with a Universe what so ever then why should it even be in that Universe from the start? that would agian only beat the purpouse of this whole thing. In other words, only cannon and fan made oc's would be allowed into the cannon Universes. But there would of course also be a number of OC ones, of all kinds of themes/genre and settings, so that no character would have to be Universeless. And there could also be a fan/player made ones. Like my Telaria Universe. Which wouldnt be a problem or anyting since i figured that every character could join more than one Universe, in case they somehow fit in more than one. Like a crossover or halfbreed? Or perhaps in the case that someone has an Anthro character in a medieval genre. Then they could add that one to both the Universe of Anthro and Medieval. And of course players could add as many characters as they wish to the same Universe.

And of course no players can join a Universe, only their characters can. Which is not a rule really, since its not even an option.

As to how to find Universes (to look them up and such before joining them), there could be a new subtab on top, like under Community and called "Browse Universes". Once clicked on, one would be displayed a page that has on the very top a search bar and below that a list of them all. Which i guess you could filter in a number of ways, like by the number of characters in them or by how old or new the Universe is. Not sure if thats needed per say since typing the name of the universe you're looking for should be enough but still.

And as how to join the Universe in question you go to your character and click "Edit Character" on top and there, somewhere on top like next to template, you will find a drop down scroll thingy that will show all the Universes you can pick from. And i know that would be alot of work but i think that every character should be gone through an admin to make sure it has a connection to it before its added or at the very least that people can report if they find a character that dosent belong and have it removed. That sounds kinda mean i guess but agian if thats allowed then the whole purpouse of this thing would be lost.

Cause agian the soul purpouse of the Universe feature would be to find characters of certain Universes or themes easier. Cause as it is right now, if i want to find for example a dragon character then there is no easy way to do it. I cant type "dragon" in names cause i am most likely to not find anything there. I mean people here are far from creative and will not name their dragon character "dragon". And if i search through categories/genre and type "dragon" then i will be pesented with a number of them to choose from, which isnt bad per say but it would be quicker and easier if ALL the dragon characters were collected in ONE place. Though of course in this case the dragon characters (feral ones) would be in the Mythical Beasts & Creatures Universe so they would be mixed with others of that kind but still! And of course the finding character page could have a filter for Universes as well.

I think thats was all i could think of/say about this, so if you have any questions then feel free to ask. I feel like i forgot something really so dont be shy to point out flaws or whatever with my idea. Or come up with more ideas/features of this concept. Im sure that we togheter can make this new function awesome like the rest of the website!^^

Thank you for reading!

So, there's a tag system that we have here. If I recall, it's going to be expanded upon to include searching in these tags, if that makes sense? Unless that's already happened and I forgot aha.

You mean the genre/categories? well thoese arent very good if you ask me. I mean sure its useful if you're looking for anything within a certain theme but if you want to find a very specific character then these Universe system would work so much better and faster.

You actually can already tag your characters with 'universes' but it is an underused feature.

1) Edit your character and go to 'Settings'. Add tags of their Universe.


2) Use the Search Bar to find characters from the same Universe.


Click 'Find Characters with this Tag'

True but this is for games only, or atleast it should be techinally and well Universes could be anything. Characters from movies, books, games ect, you name it.

Nope this is for anything.

Searches for 'Harry Potter' 'Pokemon' and 'The Walking Dead' all bring up results.

You could even tag with your own original universes.

Well then it shouldnt be called "Game" tag anymore but Universe or something instead. Cause thats just illogical. And sorry if i may sound rude or upset but i am not a fan of that stuff, its called Game tag and therefor it should only be used for that.

And agian anyone can make these so there might be dulpicates and that is the main reason to why i want Universes to be considerd.

And also how do i know in the first place what to look for exactly? If i am looking for a OC one i mean. Like lets say that i am looking for a feral dragon one for my character Alora. Then how should i go about that? can you somehow browse game tags?

I think the game tags are sufficient for what FantasyDreamer wants but it's true that people use these for things other than games, and it's annoying having duplicates.

It's worse if (I'm making this up as an example) I wanted to find all characters for 'Dark Souls III' and there might be, say, 10 of them on RPR, but you miss out 5 of them because they're tagged 'Dark Souls 3', 'DSIII' or 'DS3' or some other variation.

Exactly! that is just what im talking about! if there was instead only one, an offical one for Dark Souls 3 then noboddy would miss any one and it would be so much easier and quicker to find what you're looking for. So yes maybe my Universe idea isnt per say needed but then instead, maybe they should fix and update the game tag instead? make it more efficent and maybe also rename it into Universe tag? I mean that would make much more sense since everybody uses the "game" tag for all kinds of things.

I think the common difficulty for both the tags and the suggested universes thing is that it's user content and not official content, which means it's always going to have a level of inconsistency. There are way too many games/universes out there for RPR to maintain an 'official' list, so it's up to the userbase to use the appropriate names and abbreviations (and why I personally recommend adding multiple tags to your characters to cover all versions, as well as searching for them).

Besides there being too many for RPR to keep track of, there's also the fact that I would hate for RPR to tell me what the right term is for the universes I participate in or even create. Taking Dark Souls as an example, what if I have built a world called 'Dark Souls'? Who is to say that I can't use that tag because Dark Souls is also the name of a popular game?

Trademarks and copyright aside, it's not RPR's place to determine what the official tag should be for anything. It's always been RPR's goal to leave the content up to the users as long as they're not breaking the rules to keep everything and everyone safe and sound. I would much prefer this stays true for the tags as well.

As for why these specific tags are called 'games', it's because roleplaying as we know it today in the creative genre is very much rooted in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, so if you're roleplaying a certain universe it's usually from a game like that. Naturally with time people have begun roleplaying from popular franchises that aren't games as a subset of fanfiction, but the root of roleplaying is still largely embedded in RPGs. There's also the fact a majority of users who found RPR in the early days came from the RPG Furcadia, so the origin of the site is very game focused.

I don't know if that's just a cultural difference people aren't used to, but I think 'games' is the appropriate name for this feature. If it gets changed to anything, I think sticking to calling it a "Setting" or something that more specifically refers to created roleplay worlds would be the better way to go about it. I think 'universe' is a bit too specific and doesn't fully encompass all the intentions of the feature.

I understand that, a user-curated list isn't subject to quality control so duplicates are expected. It just looks a bit cluttered to me /nitpick I agree that it's unrealistic for RPR to maintain game tags, especially if that interferes with what people can call their roleplay settings. I think the game tag system works fine as-is, however, I'd find it useful if the entry box gave you suggestions as you type, so that you could choose a game that already exists if you had that in mind.

I would REALLY like this.